I'm begining to code with AS. I'm using a FlashMX AS book to
learn with Flash 8. Will that cause a problem?
In my textbook, it has a simple code to load up an external
.txt file onto a dynamic text field.

-The .txt file (with MS Notepad): &electricBill=60
-.txt file saved as: Electric_Bill.txt
-saved in the same folder as the .fla file that is being
used.

-the text field instance name: owed

-code inserted on frame 1 of the actions layer.
-the code to load up the .txt file: loadVariablesNum
("Electric_Bill.txt", 0)

When I Cntrl+ENTER to see how it runs, it doesn't show
anything in the text field.
There's a lightbulb that turns on and shines according to how
much someone pays their bill. If underpaid, the light doesn't turn
on. If paid in full, the light turns on. If overpaid, the light
bulb shines very bright. But when I run it, the "owed" text field
shows nothing (it suppose to show 60). The movie doesn't work at
all.

Though, when I make the text field = 60 by typing 60 into the
text field and then run it...it works respectively to the dynamic
text input. Underpaid, paid in full, and overpaid works fine.

What I would like to know is, am I typing the right code,
saving the file in the right place, does MX scripting work with
Flash 8.

Make sure that you're loading the varibales in the right
direction (right there where the textfield is).
Im not sure if you can load external data into a static
textfield -as far as i know only "dynamic" and "input" types will
work fine.

Some code from Flash MX will not work if you want to publish
with AS 2,
and many things have been deprecated - i.e. replaced with
something much
better and/or more streamlined. Just IMO, get an ActionScript
2 or
Flash 8 book instead.